To Arthur Henfrey 17 March [1855]
Summary
Can AH give information about D. A. Godron, "De l’espèce et des races" [Mem. Soc. Sci. Lett. & Arts Nancy (1847): 182, 239–88]? CD unable to locate reference.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Arthur Henfrey |
Date: | 17 Mar [1855] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1648 |
From J. D. Hooker [before 17 March 1855]
Summary
JDH criticises C. J. F. Bunbury’s paper on Madeira [J. Linn. Soc. Lond. (Bot.) 1 (1857): 1–35].
Absence of Ophrys on Madeira suggests to JDH a sequence in creation of groups.
Why are flightless insects common in desert?
Australian endemism.
Author: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | [before 17 Mar 1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 104: 210–13 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1644 |
To J. D. Hooker 11 May [1855]
Summary
JDH to be appointed Assistant Director at Kew.
On where to publish seed-salting paper. Floating problem perhaps more important than germination.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 11 May [1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 114: 131 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1680 |
To J. D. Hooker 18 [July 1855]
Summary
Has read a paper, presumably by JDH, using the Madeiran flora to argue against Forbes’s doctrine.
JDH asked how far CD will go in attributing common descent; he intends to show "the facts & arguments for & against the common descent of species of same genus; & then show how far the same arguments tell for or against forms, more & more widely different".
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 18 [July 1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 114: 142 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1719 |
To T. C. Eyton 26 November [1855]
Summary
Asks TCE’s advice on preparation of birds’ skeletons.
His pigeon collection is growing; now has pairs of ten varieties.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Thomas Campbell Eyton |
Date: | 26 Nov [1855] |
Classmark: | Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham (EYT/1/41) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1784 |
To G. R. Waterhouse 4 March [1855]
Summary
A page of [unspecified] text is missing from a parcel of material received from GRW.
CD "hopes and expects to live to see Carboniferous, & perhaps even Silurian, mammifers!"
Has several questions to ask whenever they meet.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | George Robert Waterhouse |
Date: | 4 Mar [1855] |
Classmark: | Natural History Museum, Library and Archives (Archives DF PAL/100/7/29) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1641 |
To W. D. Fox 26 April [1855]
Summary
Explains more clearly what he is looking for in his work on poultry: relative variation at different ages, the effect of disuse on different parts, breeding between wild and domestic, and degree of fertility of "mongrels of very diverse races".
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | William Darwin Fox |
Date: | 26 Apr [1855] |
Classmark: | Christ’s College Library, Cambridge (MS 53 Fox 89) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1675 |
To J. D. Hooker 14 [August 1855]
Summary
When JDH goes to Germany, will he ask seed men if their marvellous true breeding lines are the result of selection.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 14 [Aug 1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 114: 145 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1741 |
To Asa Gray 24 August [1855]
Summary
"Close" species in large and small genera.
Alphonse de Candolle on geographical distribution [Géographie botanique raisonnée (1855)].
Species variability.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Asa Gray |
Date: | 24 Aug [1855] |
Classmark: | Archives of the Gray Herbarium, Harvard University (10) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1749 |
To J. D. Hooker 27 May [1855]
Summary
CD’s seed paper in Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 255–8];
CD attacks Forbes’s "Atlantis".
Considers solutions to floating problem. Decides to test Azores seeds.
Photographs and drawings of CD.
Plant movement experiments with Hedysarum gyrans.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 27 May [1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 114: 132 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1688 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … 1847 . Wollaston 1854 , pp. xiii–xiv. The introductory essay to J. D. Hooker and Thomson …
- … J. D. Hooker and Thomson 1855, pp. 13–18). William Benjamin Carpenter must have seen an advance copy of the work since it was published in July (L. Huxley ed. 1918, 1: 374). Principles of general and comparative physiology ( Carpenter 1839 ). An annotated copy of the fourth edition ( Carpenter 1854 ) …
To W. D. Fox 19 March [1855]
Summary
Asks WDF to observe at what age pigeons have tail-feathers sufficiently developed to be counted.
CD is hard at work on his notes for a book with all the facts "for & versus" the immutability of species.
Asks for a young chicken and a nestling common pigeon.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | William Darwin Fox |
Date: | 19 Mar [1855] |
Classmark: | Christ’s College Library, Cambridge (MS 53 Fox 87) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1651 |
To J. D. Hooker 14 [July 1855]
Summary
CD experiments: sowing seeds in fields; "breaking" seeds’ constitution with coloured light; plant hybridisation. Compiling works on hybridism.
Respect for W. B. Carpenter.
Note on "nectar secreting" to Gardeners’ Chronicle [Collected papers 1: 258–9].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Joseph Dalton Hooker |
Date: | 14 [July 1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 114: 141 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1717 |
From Robert Hunt 19 July 1855
Summary
Discusses how best to simulate the light at a particular point on the earth’s surface using coloured glass; considers sunlight as composed of three "principles", varying in proportion according to latitude, which affect germination, lignification, and floriation.
Author: | Robert Hunt |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 19 July 1855 |
Classmark: | DAR 261.11: 17 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1721 |
From John Davy 30 January 1855
Summary
Responds to CD’s letter. The ova of Salmonidae exposed to air, if kept moist, will stay alive up to 72 hours.
Author: | John Davy |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 30 Jan 1855 |
Classmark: | DAR 205.2: 227 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1634 |
To Syms Covington 28 February 1855
Summary
Pleased to hear that SC is prospering.
News of FitzRoy, Sulivan and J. L. Stokes.
The Crimean War is badly mismanaged, but Englishmen are behaving nobly.
Wishes he knew what to do with his boys.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Syms Covington |
Date: | 28 Feb 1855 |
Classmark: | Sydney Mail, 9 August 1884, pp. 254–5 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1637 |
To Charles Lyell 4 November [1855]
Summary
Comments on two pamphlets by John Bachman [probably Continuation of the review of "Nott and Gliddon’s types of mankind" (1855) and An examination of the characteristics of genera and species as applicable to the doctrine of the unity of the human race (1855)].
CD’s pigeon breeding and plant hybridization experiments.
Invites CL to visit.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Charles Lyell, 1st baronet |
Date: | 4 Nov [1855] |
Classmark: | American Philosophical Society (Mss.B.D25.115) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1772 |
To J. S. Henslow 12 October [1855]
Summary
Is impressed by all JSH is doing with his lectures and exhibitions at Hitcham.
Has read admirable Hooker MS on variation, geographical range, etc. [Introductory essay to the Flora Indica (1855)].
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | John Stevens Henslow |
Date: | 12 Oct [1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 93: A117–18 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1765 |
From Thomas Vernon Wollaston 2 March [1855]
Summary
Hybrid insects.
Description of the Salvages.
Variability of "transition groups" of insects; relation of variability to ranges of insects. The variability of wings, even within species. Reduction of flying ability on isolated islands.
Forbes’s "Atlantis" theory and insect fauna of the Atlantic islands, considered with regard to insect migrations.
Author: | Thomas Vernon Wollaston |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 2 Mar [1855] |
Classmark: | DAR 181: 136 |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1640 |
Matches: 2 hits
- … J. D. Hooker, 7 March [1855] . See also Natural selection , p. 291. Statistics on apterous beetles are cited from Wollaston 1854 …
- … 1854 , p. xii). CD discussed the origin of apterous insects, with special reference to Wollaston’s findings, at length in Natural selection , pp. 291–3. See also letter from J. D. Hooker, [ …
To M. J. Berkeley 7 April [1855]
Summary
Asks for a pea variety for an experiment.
Discusses C. F. v. Gärtner’s results [in Bastarderzeugung im Pflanzenreich (1849)]. Criticises Gärtner’s belief that hybrids are always less fertile than their parents.
Asks about MJB’s experiments.
Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Addressee: | Miles Joseph Berkeley |
Date: | 7 Apr [1855] |
Classmark: | Shropshire Archives (SA 6001/134/41) |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1662 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1854, p. 404, and also mentioned biefly in Berkeley 1850–1 (see n. 6, below). These peas were a different colour from the normal peas of the mother plant, an effect that Berkeley ascribed to the direct action of the pollen of the other parent on the outer coating of the ovule. However, CD had been misled by inaccurate labelling at Kew (see letter to J. D. Hooker, …
From H. C. Watson 11 October 1855
Summary
Sends London catalogue of British plants with close species marked.
Charges E. Forbes with fraudulent appropriation of others’ work.
Comments on, and cites possible cases of, CD’s imagined rule that individuals of one or more species in a genus vary in some of those characters by which the species of that genus are distinguished.
Author: | Hewett Cottrell Watson |
Addressee: | Charles Robert Darwin |
Date: | 11 Oct 1855 |
Classmark: | DAR 47: 163a–b |
Letter no: | DCP-LETT-1764 |
letter | (23) |
Darwin, C. R. | (7) |
Hooker, J. D. | (6) |
Fox, W. D. | (2) |
Berkeley, M. J. | (1) |
Covington, Syms | (1) |
Darwin, C. R. | (23) |
Hooker, J. D. | (7) |
Blyth, Edward | (2) |
Fox, W. D. | (2) |
Berkeley, M. J. | (1) |